I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
As with Martin Bell, Clarkson’s only chance is if every other major party (including Reform) withdraws and gives him a clean run.
However, if Clarkson can force Ed Miliband to spend a fair amount of the next three years in Darlington rather than in Westminster, then it probably helps the country in the long run.
Darlington? Darlington?
Ed is Doncaster North, not that I have seen him once in the constituency in all the years he has been the MP.
I don't think Clarkson will win unless everyone else stands down, which they won't.
I was surprised there was no Reform candidate in the GE. I think the block Labour vote from the ex-mining villages is slowly disappearing and is becoming Reform adjacent - this was apparent in the council elections.
[Clarkson lived in a big grade II listed house in Tickhill as a child. This is not exactly a deprived area, and is in a different constituency]
It is a bit odd that the Milibands have always been very smart London. Ralph 'Martyr to the cause' always kept himself in nice digs and his sons too. Quite what they offer to Doncaster or South Shields that was unavailable locally escapes me. Still it's nice that Ed has a regional accent... just not sure that there are any regions willing to adopt it.
(I really am starting to dislike EdM.)
Yes, I never quite understood why he got the block vote from people with whom he has nothing in common. He has never lived in the constituency.
I suppose not many from Bentley were going to vote for the party of Thatcher, so it was basically by default.
The Labour party has sown the seeds of its own destruction by taking constituencies for granted.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
I don't really buy the argument that Labour would be incredibly popular and the economy would be going gangbusters if they could just whack up income tax. That money would still be absent from the economy, so the economical effects (albeit slightly differently manifested) would still be there. You are removing that money from the economy.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
Surely the problem with Clarkson (J) standing for Parliament in Doncaster (N) is that he is wildly anti-Brexit. "The biggest mistake of a lifetime", quoth he. So Reform and the Tories are out, he would be fighting a Labour incumbent, and he hates the Greens. So, Lib Dem it is then.
It doesn't matter. He's a very Brexity anti-Brexiteer.
Just as Boris gets a pass even though he's very pro immigration.
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
As with Martin Bell, Clarkson’s only chance is if every other major party (including Reform) withdraws and gives him a clean run.
However, if Clarkson can force Ed Miliband to spend a fair amount of the next three years in Darlington rather than in Westminster, then it probably helps the country in the long run.
Darlington? Darlington?
Ed is Doncaster North, not that I have seen him once in the constituency in all the years he has been the MP.
I don't think Clarkson will win unless everyone else stands down, which they won't.
I was surprised there was no Reform candidate in the GE. I think the block Labour vote from the ex-mining villages is slowly disappearing and is becoming Reform adjacent - this was apparent in the council elections.
[Clarkson lived in a big grade II listed house in Tickhill as a child. This is not exactly a deprived area, and is in a different constituency]
It is a bit odd that the Milibands have always been very smart London. Ralph 'Martyr to the cause' always kept himself in nice digs and his sons too. Quite what they offer to Doncaster or South Shields that was unavailable locally escapes me. Still it's nice that Ed has a regional accent... just not sure that there are any regions willing to adopt it.
(I really am starting to dislike EdM.)
Yes, I never quite understood why he got the block vote from people with whom he has nothing in common. He has never lived in the constituency.
I suppose not many from Bentley were going to vote for the party of Thatcher, so it was basically by default.
The Labour party has sown the seeds of its own destruction by taking constituencies for granted.
I dont think it necessary for MPs to be local, though it does help. Some of the best MPs around me are inward migrants.
For that matter had Farage even visited Clacton, or Tice Skegness before the GE campaign. Or indeed since...
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
How long before the U-turn?
Is this going in include ordinary (not LL) Partnerships too?
I'm sure builder X with his partner being allocated £12k for doing the accounts will be happy.
As with Martin Bell, Clarkson’s only chance is if every other major party (including Reform) withdraws and gives him a clean run.
However, if Clarkson can force Ed Miliband to spend a fair amount of the next three years in Darlington rather than in Westminster, then it probably helps the country in the long run.
Darlington? Darlington?
Ed is Doncaster North, not that I have seen him once in the constituency in all the years he has been the MP.
I don't think Clarkson will win unless everyone else stands down, which they won't.
I was surprised there was no Reform candidate in the GE. I think the block Labour vote from the ex-mining villages is slowly disappearing and is becoming Reform adjacent - this was apparent in the council elections.
[Clarkson lived in a big grade II listed house in Tickhill as a child. This is not exactly a deprived area, and is in a different constituency]
It is a bit odd that the Milibands have always been very smart London. Ralph 'Martyr to the cause' always kept himself in nice digs and his sons too. Quite what they offer to Doncaster or South Shields that was unavailable locally escapes me. Still it's nice that Ed has a regional accent... just not sure that there are any regions willing to adopt it.
(I really am starting to dislike EdM.)
Yes, I never quite understood why he got the block vote from people with whom he has nothing in common. He has never lived in the constituency.
I suppose not many from Bentley were going to vote for the party of Thatcher, so it was basically by default.
The Labour party has sown the seeds of its own destruction by taking constituencies for granted.
Conservatives have a similar number of constituencies, mine included. A donkey with a rosette could get elected in these constituencies. (Apologies to donkeys)
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
Sigh, your weekly, approaching bi weekly, reminder that Hunt's budget which cut NI INCREASED taxes, it did not cut them. It rebalanced the unfair penalty imposed on earned, as opposed to unearned, income to a modest degree (if not by enough). It did NOT increase the deficit or amount to a "trap" for Labour.
You can argue that Hunt should have increased taxes by more than he did given the level of deficit. I would probably agree. You can argue that he ducked difficult questions on spending. I would certainly agree. But it is dishonest to say that he cut taxes. He did not.
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
I don't really buy the argument that Labour would be incredibly popular and the economy would be going gangbusters if they could just whack up income tax. That money would still be absent from the economy, so the economical effects (albeit slightly differently manifested) would still be there. You are removing that money from the economy.
Economics is a tricky subject. Obviously Economists know far less than the rest of us about it, but still it's tricky.
I contend: The penal Stamp Duty rates introduced by Osborne have stifled the UK economy.
I'm not going to make some great argument, you'll either see it or you won't, but I do think that property stamp duty has been a massive brake on our economy.
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
Clarkson said that, generally, he can spend time with people who have differing views to his own – but “the one exception” is “people who voted for Brexit”. He said: “It’s not so bad if they put their hands up and admit they made a mistake. But if I encounter someone who still thinks it was all a brilliant idea, I get so cross my hair catches fire and my teeth start to itch.”
I can see that being a problem for Nigel.
And when we were in the EU, he supported giving the EU more power, ostensibly to take it away from 'the idiot Blair' - obviously blithely assuming that the EU didn't do idiots, despite the presence of assorted Kinnocks. It's the sort of faux plucky Brit attitude that was very common in Tory circles in the 2000s. Cameron and Osborne picking public spats followed by private writing of cheques. Its main media champion is The Times and assorted Murdoch publications - still doing wet left wingery disguised as Toryism to this day. Though to a far smaller audience.
Needless to say, I have very little time for his politics. He would of course be an upgrade on Ed Milliband, but so would a jam jar full of smallpox.
Whatever Tony Blair's faults, and there are many, as far as I know he was never accused of using MI5 to put his political opponents under surveillance.
There are "no plans" for US President Donald Trump to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.
Last Thursday Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.
A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week - but the White House said the two had had a "productive" call and that a meeting was no longer "necessary".
Putin clearly ghosting him on Signal. No sign that Trump will be able to end a 28th war this year.
Surely someone in the WH would have pointed out a) the suggestion of going to Hungary was a non-starter for Putin in the same way as landing in Europe was a non-starter for Netanyahu. b) the Russian media has continued to repeat the line that it's all in for Russia and the SMO due to 'reasons'.
Putin has not moved an inch in all the time this has being going on and why Trump thinks it's different indicates he's incapable of understanding the dynamics of the Russian position wrt Ukraine and their aspirations for further SMO's in the Baltics.
By the same token, I also doubt he understands the dynamics of the Mid-East conflict.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
As a self employed advocate I paid quite a chunk of NI. Not as much as I do now sort of employed by Crown Office, but not nothing either.
Increasing or widening the scope of employee NICs is altogether the wrong way round. Continue to cut it and stick up income tax instead. Capital gains on sales is also the wrong way to go about a property tax.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
A sup rising number of people here think he is Trump or Farage. He is neither.
Trump/Farage would be Peron, and the Peronist who followed him. Authoritarian nationalists who tried to spend Argentina rich.
Millei came to power on the basis of (and has tried to) vaguely balance the books. Much in the style of the old IMF rescues of third and developing world nations.
He is the one trying to cleanup the party. If we get Full Faragism, we will get our Millei after a few decades of collapse.
This might be the most disturbing AI paper of 2025 Scientists just proved that large language models can literally rot their own brains the same way humans get brain rot from scrolling junk content online. They fed models months of viral Twitter data short, high-engagement posts and watched their cognition collapse: - Reasoning fell by 23% - Long-context memory dropped 30% - Personality tests showed spikes in narcissism & psychopathy And get this even after retraining on clean, high-quality data, the damage didn’t fully heal. The representational “rot” persisted. It’s not just bad data → bad output. It’s bad data → permanent cognitive drift. The AI equivalent of doomscrolling is real. And it’s already happening. https://x.com/alex_prompter/status/1980224548550369376
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
I don't really buy the argument that Labour would be incredibly popular and the economy would be going gangbusters if they could just whack up income tax. That money would still be absent from the economy, so the economical effects (albeit slightly differently manifested) would still be there. You are removing that money from the economy.
Economics is a tricky subject. Obviously Economists know far less than the rest of us about it, but still it's tricky.
I contend: The penal Stamp Duty rates introduced by Osborne have stifled the UK economy.
I'm not going to make some great argument, you'll either see it or you won't, but I do think that property stamp duty has been a massive brake on our economy.
Yes, specific taxes will have specific effects, but the overall effect is still to expropriate large sums of money out of pockets and into the Exchequer. I think we're at a level where we're just taking too much - certainly than a delicate economy where virtually all businesses can pack up and go elsewhere can stand.
As with Martin Bell, Clarkson’s only chance is if every other major party (including Reform) withdraws and gives him a clean run.
However, if Clarkson can force Ed Miliband to spend a fair amount of the next three years in Darlington rather than in Westminster, then it probably helps the country in the long run.
Darlington? Darlington?
Ed is Doncaster North, not that I have seen him once in the constituency in all the years he has been the MP.
I don't think Clarkson will win unless everyone else stands down, which they won't.
I was surprised there was no Reform candidate in the GE. I think the block Labour vote from the ex-mining villages is slowly disappearing and is becoming Reform adjacent - this was apparent in the council elections.
[Clarkson lived in a big grade II listed house in Tickhill as a child. This is not exactly a deprived area, and is in a different constituency]
It is a bit odd that the Milibands have always been very smart London. Ralph 'Martyr to the cause' always kept himself in nice digs and his sons too. Quite what they offer to Doncaster or South Shields that was unavailable locally escapes me. Still it's nice that Ed has a regional accent... just not sure that there are any regions willing to adopt it.
(I really am starting to dislike EdM.)
Yes, I never quite understood why he got the block vote from people with whom he has nothing in common. He has never lived in the constituency.
I suppose not many from Bentley were going to vote for the party of Thatcher, so it was basically by default.
The Labour party has sown the seeds of its own destruction by taking constituencies for granted.
I dont think it necessary for MPs to be local, though it does help. Some of the best MPs around me are inward migrants.
For that matter had Farage even visited Clacton, or Tice Skegness before the GE campaign. Or indeed since...
If he was actually an inward migrant that would be fine, but he lives in London.
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
You seem to assume all Remainers wanted more EU integration . As for facts or logic not sure being on the Leave side is a badge of honour in that respect ! As one of those Remainers EU membership isn’t really about economics . That was really a stale argument flogged to cremation by a very poor Remain campaign in 2016.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
As a self employed advocate I paid quite a chunk of NI. Not as much as I do now sort of employed by Crown Office, but not nothing either.
Increasing or widening the scope of employee NICs is altogether the wrong way round. Continue to cut it and stick up income tax instead. Capital gains on sales is also the wrong way to go about a property tax.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
It's the 15% employer NI that is reduced to self employment rates if you are a partner in a LLP.
And I'm sorry but given the partnership is limited liability I don't see where the risk involved is so I don't see why you should be subject to a lower rate of employer Ni than other directors.
However any transaction tax on property purchases outside of second homes is a stupid idea - taxes should be annual and on ownership....
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
As a self employed advocate I paid quite a chunk of NI. Not as much as I do now sort of employed by Crown Office, but not nothing either.
Increasing or widening the scope of employee NICs is altogether the wrong way round. Continue to cut it and stick up income tax instead. Capital gains on sales is also the wrong way to go about a property tax.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
Yes. It is ridiculous that a company director pays EeNI (and, indirectly, Ers NI as well) on his salary but doesn't on his dividends. It is ridiculous that someone who works for a living pays more tax than those receiving rent or interest or pensions. It is preposterous that the rate of tax is less on capital gains than it is on income earned or unearned. So often these numbers are interchangeable and it is the rest of us that pay for these games. Our tax system is a complicated joke which benefits the wealthy and the well paid at the cost of the rest of us.
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
Russian reports are generally full of shit, so it will be interesting to see what this actually is.
...A large number of Hellfire drones are flying, and at least 10 British Storm Shadow missiles have been launched. Ukraine is striking with practically everything it has, according to Russian military correspondents.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
As a self employed advocate I paid quite a chunk of NI. Not as much as I do now sort of employed by Crown Office, but not nothing either.
Increasing or widening the scope of employee NICs is altogether the wrong way round. Continue to cut it and stick up income tax instead. Capital gains on sales is also the wrong way to go about a property tax.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
Yes. It is ridiculous that a company director pays EeNI (and, indirectly, Ers NI as well) on his salary but doesn't on his dividends. It is ridiculous that someone who works for a living pays more tax than those receiving rent or interest or pensions. It is preposterous that the rate of tax is less on capital gains than it is on income earned or unearned. So often these numbers are interchangeable and it is the rest of us that pay for these games. Our tax system is a complicated joke which benefits the wealthy and the well paid at the cost of the rest of us.
Interesting article by Chris Mullin in the Guardian
The Tories set a tax trap and Rachel Reeves walked straight into it. It may be her defining mistake
By taking Jeremy Hunt’s NI cuts and ruling out other rises, Labour tried to out-Tory the Tories. And made a bad situation worse
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in over tax. The key moment was not the defenestration of their welfare bill or the uprising over pensioners’ winter fuel payments. The die was cast more than a year earlier.
In January 2024, the then chancellor Jeremy Hunt implemented a cut in employee national insurance contributions. Four months later he announced a further reduction from 10% to 8% and even hinted that he was considering abolishing employee contributions altogether. It was the mother of all election bribes, costing the exchequer about £10bn a year. It was also entirely cynical, offered in the absolute confidence that the Tories would not be in office long enough to grapple with the consequences. Had they by any chance won the election, he would have had to recoup the tax revenue forgone by either tax increases or by further swingeing cuts to the public sector.
For Labour, this was an obvious trap. Faced with these utterly irresponsible tax cuts at a time when pressure on the public sector was approaching breaking point, Reeves was challenged by Hunt to say whether, if she became chancellor, she would reinstate them. The sensible reply would have been to say: “We will decide if and when we are elected, and discover how much of a mess you have left us.” She might also have added, “And, by the way, the next election will not be about tax cuts. It will be about the dreadful state of the public sector.”
Instead, however, Reeves fell headlong into the trap Hunt had set, promising not only that she would not reinstate his cuts, but incredibly going further and promising not to raise any of the main sources of revenue: income tax, VAT or national insurance. From that moment on the party was doomed
This might be the most disturbing AI paper of 2025 Scientists just proved that large language models can literally rot their own brains the same way humans get brain rot from scrolling junk content online. They fed models months of viral Twitter data short, high-engagement posts and watched their cognition collapse: - Reasoning fell by 23% - Long-context memory dropped 30% - Personality tests showed spikes in narcissism & psychopathy And get this even after retraining on clean, high-quality data, the damage didn’t fully heal. The representational “rot” persisted. It’s not just bad data → bad output. It’s bad data → permanent cognitive drift. The AI equivalent of doomscrolling is real. And it’s already happening. https://x.com/alex_prompter/status/1980224548550369376
It's the "dead Internet theory" come to fruition. Bots trolling other bots.
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
You seem to assume all Remainers wanted more EU integration . As for facts or logic not sure being on the Leave side is a badge of honour in that respect ! As one of those Remainers EU membership isn’t really about economics . That was really a stale argument flogged to cremation by a very poor Remain campaign in 2016.
When support for an institution is central to ones' sense of self, that institution has carte blanche to act as it pleases. That's very dangerous.
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
Russian reports are generally full of shit, so it will be interesting to see what this actually is.
...A large number of Hellfire drones are flying, and at least 10 British Storm Shadow missiles have been launched. Ukraine is striking with practically everything it has, according to Russian military correspondents.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
As a self employed advocate I paid quite a chunk of NI. Not as much as I do now sort of employed by Crown Office, but not nothing either.
Increasing or widening the scope of employee NICs is altogether the wrong way round. Continue to cut it and stick up income tax instead. Capital gains on sales is also the wrong way to go about a property tax.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
Yes. It is ridiculous that a company director pays EeNI (and, indirectly, Ers NI as well) on his salary but doesn't on his dividends. It is ridiculous that someone who works for a living pays more tax than those receiving rent or interest or pensions. It is preposterous that the rate of tax is less on capital gains than it is on income earned or unearned. So often these numbers are interchangeable and it is the rest of us that pay for these games. Our tax system is a complicated joke which benefits the wealthy and the well paid at the cost of the rest of us.
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
None of these are in his constituency, but they are ridiculously large and eating up a large proportion of the green space in an area where such space is in short supply. There have been lots of local protests.
There is, however, a (different) monster solar farm planned in Doncaster North. I've been vaguely involved in suggesting minor modifications to it to protect the environment (much of it is on pasture land, some adjacent to a wetland corridor) but the developers are having none of it and apparently a consultation with Ed got nowhere.
So he's definitely prepared to have them in his own constituency.
The people in the rural parts aren't the ones that vote for him, though.
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
Oh, bonus points if we can get Miliband on record as saying that “solar farms are awesome, but not in my constituency”.
Even better - Healey, the Labour MP claims that the safety grounds is “flooding risk”
Except that solar panels sit above the ground. Very often now, there are no footings. The frames are just weighted down with concrete blocks - they just sit on the grass.
Perhaps I should contact him about the aetheric and phlogiston risks of solar farming? {giggles evilly}
“Photonic Overharvesting and Its Consequences for Aether Stability and Phlogiston Retention in the Lower Atmosphere”
Abstract
Recent expansions in terrestrial heliocapture infrastructure—commonly referred to as “solar farms”—have raised unanticipated concerns regarding their perturbative effects on the sub-luminiferous aether and regional phlogiston equilibria. Using a combination of neo-alchemical spectroscopy and quantum-vital resonance mapping, we demonstrate that extensive photon sequestration leads to measurable rarefaction in local aether density (Δρₐ ≈ 0.42 milli-ether units per gigawatt of capture capacity). Concurrently, phlogistic depletion was observed in the immediate atmos-temporal boundary layers, suggesting partial oxidation of the vital fire principle through sustained heliometric interference. Computational modeling within the Aetheric Dynamic Framework (ADF-7) predicts long-term destabilization of neighboring epiphanic vortices, potentially resulting in spontaneous cold combustion events and the attenuation of spontaneous generation processes. Our findings highlight the urgent need for an integrated heliophlogistic regulatory framework and recommend immediate suspension of solar array expansion pending further metaphysical impact assessment.
TV "personalities" trying to win a seat on the back of an unpopular local candidate rarely do well. Martin Bell seems to be the exception rather the rule. The like of Al Murray, all the dickheads that have gone for London Mayor, etc, don't trouble the scorers. The Monster Raving Loony Party often still do better than them.
There are "no plans" for US President Donald Trump to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.
Last Thursday Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.
A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week - but the White House said the two had had a "productive" call and that a meeting was no longer "necessary".
Putin clearly ghosting him on Signal. No sign that Trump will be able to end a 28th war this year.
Surely someone in the WH would have pointed out a) the suggestion of going to Hungary was a non-starter for Putin in the same way as landing in Europe was a non-starter for Netanyahu. b) the Russian media has continued to repeat the line that it's all in for Russia and the SMO due to 'reasons'.
Putin has not moved an inch in all the time this has being going on and why Trump thinks it's different indicates he's incapable of understanding the dynamics of the Russian position wrt Ukraine and their aspirations for further SMO's in the Baltics.
By the same token, I also doubt he understands the dynamics of the Mid-East conflict.
That this malignant clown is the most powerful person on the planet, and probably will be for the next three years, is far and away the biggest problem humanity faces right now. There are lots but this dwarfes them all.
The lowest score for the fascists with any pollster for at least 5 months. Should we be celebrating?
Depends how much store you set by Yougov.
Traditionally PB's 'gold standard'
But very much an outlier from other pollsters.
It's the only pollster that puts Reform on under 30%, or indeed, has the left wing parties leading the right wing parties , in terms of combined vote share.
Lam's comments are vague. Is she talking about sending back people legally here on temporary visas, or who have indefinite leave to remain, or who have acquired citizenship?
She talks about "cultural coherence". She should be pressed on what or who she means. I presume it's a dog-whistle for Muslims.
I believe she is very clear in what she meant. I suspect you are right about the anti-Islam dog whistle.
Cheap and nasty politics.
It's going to take some time to get there but the only non fascist non racist approach to Islam, in the actual situation we are in, is incorporation into the mainstream. Millions are here, lawfully and properly and it makes no difference now as to whether it was a good idea at the time. The UK population as a whole, whatever they prefer the past to have been, are not going to watch long term and permanently settled populations, including friends and neighbours 'remigrated'.
No wonder there are no One Nation Tories left. They have all been forcibly remigrated to Labour, the LDs and NOTA. Reform and Tory words on this recently have been shameful.
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
You seem to assume all Remainers wanted more EU integration . As for facts or logic not sure being on the Leave side is a badge of honour in that respect ! As one of those Remainers EU membership isn’t really about economics . That was really a stale argument flogged to cremation by a very poor Remain campaign in 2016.
When support for an institution is central to ones' sense of self, that institution has carte blanche to act as it pleases. That's very dangerous.
If people felt the EU was going too far then they wouldn’t support it . Countries still have veto power in a number of areas . FOM was something to be celebrated IMO and not seen as something members were subjected too . Luckily I still have that by dint of my parents and count myself extremely fortunate . Anyway thanks for at least putting your arguments forward based on your genuine concerns .
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
This might be the most disturbing AI paper of 2025 Scientists just proved that large language models can literally rot their own brains the same way humans get brain rot from scrolling junk content online. They fed models months of viral Twitter data short, high-engagement posts and watched their cognition collapse: - Reasoning fell by 23% - Long-context memory dropped 30% - Personality tests showed spikes in narcissism & psychopathy And get this even after retraining on clean, high-quality data, the damage didn’t fully heal. The representational “rot” persisted. It’s not just bad data → bad output. It’s bad data → permanent cognitive drift. The AI equivalent of doomscrolling is real. And it’s already happening. https://x.com/alex_prompter/status/1980224548550369376
It's the "dead Internet theory" come to fruition. Bots trolling other bots.
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
They are not immortally safe sir. They may collapse in a Heep.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
Excellent news! If lawyers have to work longer hours to maintain their lifestyles, we will not have to suffer their interminable delays. If GPs have to work longer hours we will get more much needed appointments. If accountants have to work longer hours we will get our tax returns submitted on time. Make the lazy shysters work as hard as the rest of us.
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
You seem to assume all Remainers wanted more EU integration . As for facts or logic not sure being on the Leave side is a badge of honour in that respect ! As one of those Remainers EU membership isn’t really about economics . That was really a stale argument flogged to cremation by a very poor Remain campaign in 2016.
When support for an institution is central to ones' sense of self, that institution has carte blanche to act as it pleases. That's very dangerous.
If people felt the EU was going too far then they wouldn’t support it . Countries still have veto power in a number of areas . FOM was something to be celebrated IMO and not seen as something members were subjected too . Luckily I still have that by dint of my parents and count myself extremely fortunate . Anyway thanks for at least putting your arguments forward based on your genuine concerns .
They didn’t support it and the establishment knew. That’s why Brown signed Lisbon with as little ceremony as he could get away with.
Isn't the key tension between Clarkson the man and Clarkson the character? Becoming an MP is exactly the sort of thing that Jezza, the lead personality of the (scripted reality/fictional) Jezza Show might do, but the real human being? Not sure, but he probably has more sense. In any case, the gap between the character and the man might piss off his supporters. (See also, that unreality star "Boris").
On the subject of the prosecution of Latetia James, she is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
The question is a simple one: did she claim it was a second home (when it wasn't) when it was in fact going to be rented out?
The whole case -apparently- relates to a single check box that was left unchecked on one page of the mortgage application form.
Now, the interesting question (or issue) for the prosecution is that it appears that Ms James did not fill out the application. She sat in the bank office, while being asked questions, and a bank employee filled the form in.
This makes it quite a difficult case for the prosecution, because how do they prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bank employee actually asked the question, and correctly acted?
If she's put on the stand and says "I don't remember asking this specific question", or "it's perfectly possible that I made a mistake", or -indeed- the defence introduces evidence that a significant percentage of applications have minor errors like this caused by bank errors, then it will extremely difficult to get it beyond reasonable doubt.
It's not as clear cut as the Comey case (where he is clearly but technically innocent), but at the same time, I can't help feel that it will be extremely difficult to get 12 members of a Jury* to agree to her having a mens rea over a box she did not fill in herself.
* And you need all 12 to agree in the US
Were there any significant tax or other benefits of what she wrote on the form? If I, a bank, were comfortable with her financial position for the loan without rental income, the added rental income should improve her affordability?
As, if not, it very much seems to be a prosecution based on ticking the wrong box on a form once with no real world implications.
The bank will give you a very different interest rate and deposit requirement on your own house, compared to a rental.
Well, there are a number of factors here:
Firstly, people will often buy a house for one reason, and then change it. I bought my house in Hampstead to live in, then rented it out when I moved to the US. So, there's a defence for Ms James (if the box was knowingly not ticked), that she had intended it to be a second home at the time that the mortgage was taken out, and changed it later.
Secondly, I don't know whether this is about interest rates, becaus interest rates can actually be lower on rental property mortgages so long as they get first lein on rental payments. On the other hand rental mortgages often contain a lot more stringent conditions: lower loan-to-value; requirements to inform the bank if a property is unrented for more than a certain number of months; a requirement for rental income to exceed mortgage payments by a certain amount. It's possible that Ms James achieved no interest rate benefit, but did have many fewer disclosure requirements to the bank.
She said it was to be her primary home, but was clearly living elsewhere at the time.
The loan application says it was to be a secondary residence, but for her own use. However, there apparently exists a separate "Power of Attorney Document" which lists it as her primary residence (which would definitely be a lie.) This does not, however, form part of the mortgage application process.
It is worth noting through all of this that the mortgage itself is absolutely tiny: just $109,000 in total.
AIUI the issue is with the boilerplate Freddie Mac language which says it can be rented out after the first year but only “occasionally” in the first 12 months. It also needs to be “available for her use” - the great niece that lives there says that Ms James stayed several times a year for an extended period
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Flooding apparently. Presumably because building something = acres of concrete, inside his head.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
This is a tax on the best of humanity plus doctors and accountants.
CNBC: Is importing beef from Argentina a possibility?
BROOKE ROLLINS: Yes, the president has said he's in discussions with Argentina. It will not be very much. Argentina is also facing a foot and mouth disease issue.
I do wonder what would happen if Argentina suddenly got bold/desperate and tried to invade the Falklands.
It might be that they get done over by the defence set-up there (I have an acquaintance who was senior in the army and he had been sent down there to analyse and refresh the military’s defence plan and kit about 20 years ago and he was very certain they could bat away any invasion attempt so hope it’s still so) but if they managed to land and the British went to force them out would we have Trump now demanding that we accept it and “stop the fighting”, would he take Argentina’s side as he has financial considerations at stake or would he side with the UK?
The Millei story is a terribly sad one.
He became President of Argentina with - I believe - genuinely good intentions, and a plan to reverse much of the endemic mismanagement. Unlike his predecessors, he wanted good relations with the UK, and had no interest in the Malvinas.
Unfortunately the world economy stuttered, Argentina caught a cold, and he found himself rapidly heading down a rabbit hole.
I don't really understand these sorts of vague comments about Millei. What do you mean by a rabbit hole? As far as I can see, Millei came in to try to return the Argentinian economy to growth and get the country on a sound financial footing. He had some success - growing faster than China is a remarkable feat. He is now experiencing political headwinds at home, and currency speculators betting against the Argentinian currency abroad, and he's sought support from Trump to help get through it.
What rabbit hole? And more importantly, what would the sage commentors stroking their beards have done differently? Continued with corrupt Peronist Government and hyperinflation?
Not trying to pick on RCS, I see a lot of similar comments.
I didn't mean to be vague, let me be a bit more specific.
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Flooding apparently. Presumably because building something = acres of concrete, inside his head.
The Will Of The British People is to build nothing, anywhere. The reasons given are of the "support, not illumination" type.
(See also, "we can't have solar panels because then we will all starve"; nonsense amplified by vested interests.)
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these. I always thought the Trump prosecutions were (politically) incredibly dumb. The same is true of these.
There is no way that Comey isn't going to walk.
I woulde be extremely surprised if Latetia James doesn't get the big NG too.
And there are going to be a whole bunch of real criminals who don't end up being convicted because the US attorneys' offices are hollowed out because all the career prosecutors left rather than pursue doomed cases. How is that a vote winning strategy?
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Flooding apparently. Presumably because building something = acres of concrete, inside his head.
I could see solar panels increasing the flood risk. They will decrease the surface area onto which the rain falls and increase the run off rate. There is also quite a lot of infrastructure (switchgear etc) which is hard standing.
The land will no longer be ploughed, but it is quite firm clay and this may not actually help stop run off.
Both catchments (Kearsley Brook, Hooton Brook) caused some flooding in 2007, so without further modelling it might not be entirely clear what the effect will be.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these. I always thought the Trump prosecutions were (politically) incredibly dumb. The same is true of these.
There is no way that Comey isn't going to walk.
I woulde be extremely surprised if Latetia James doesn't get the big NG too.
And there are going to be a whole bunch of real criminals who don't end up being convicted because the US attorneys' offices are hollowed out because all the career prosecutors left rather than pursue doomed cases. How is that a vote winning strategy?
well, given rather a lot of these real criminals are his mates and family members, there is a certain logic to it.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these. I always thought the Trump prosecutions were (politically) incredibly dumb. The same is true of these.
There is no way that Comey isn't going to walk.
I woulde be extremely surprised if Latetia James doesn't get the big NG too.
And there are going to be a whole bunch of real criminals who don't end up being convicted because the US attorneys' offices are hollowed out because all the career prosecutors left rather than pursue doomed cases. How is that a vote winning strategy?
Own the libs has worked better than anyone could ever have expected so far.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
This is a tax on the best of humanity plus doctors and accountants.
The likes of Davidsons and Womble Bond Dickinson will have to pay tax on their ill-gotten gains?
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
You seem to assume all Remainers wanted more EU integration . As for facts or logic not sure being on the Leave side is a badge of honour in that respect ! As one of those Remainers EU membership isn’t really about economics . That was really a stale argument flogged to cremation by a very poor Remain campaign in 2016.
When support for an institution is central to ones' sense of self, that institution has carte blanche to act as it pleases. That's very dangerous.
If people felt the EU was going too far then they wouldn’t support it . Countries still have veto power in a number of areas . FOM was something to be celebrated IMO and not seen as something members were subjected too . Luckily I still have that by dint of my parents and count myself extremely fortunate . Anyway thanks for at least putting your arguments forward based on your genuine concerns .
They didn’t support it and the establishment knew. That’s why Brown signed Lisbon with as little ceremony as he could get away with.
FOM was portrayed as some hideous thing the UK had to suffer . Instead of a wonderful chance for Brits to live and work freely in 30 other EU and EEA countries . Now most Brits want FOM back . Most EU voters class FOM as one of the best things about being in the EU .
I don't think it can happen. Clarkson isn't dim. He will think about what's involved in being an MP and decline.
The one thinkable route is as a celeb addition to the Reform circus, with a promise that he will be a minister with a Reform manifesto for transport crafted around Clarkson populism. But I think this is a QTWTAIN.
He wouldnt want the transport job, he would want the Defra job. And I suspect he’d do it very well. Whether Farage wants him pissing inside his tent is quite another question. And I’m pretty unsure whether Clarkson would want to be inside that tent rather than just being the axeman for Miliband. But stranger things have happened.
It's not a great time for normal people who have lives to enter politics. Real success is not really in sight, so it's a career for chancers and so on. Commentary, punditry and journalism is one thing; but in current politics if you get anywhere worth getting, there is a very very high chance you and your reputation are going to go down with the ship.
On the contrary. It’s exactly the time for people who have lived real lives and careers to enter politics and potentially make a massive difference on chosen areas of policy.
The major parties are leaving a vacuum and on current polling, Reform looking like getting a strong majority but without a long established party of careerists ready to climb the greasy pole.
Reform are seeking out what they see as top tier talent for background policy advisory roles but more if the person wants it. Clarkson well might be like everyone else that isn’t an #FBPE weirdo and have come to terms with the existential grief of leaving a continental customs union and single market.
The single market and customs union re the economy are not the main reasons Remainers wanted to stay in the EU . It was about so much more than the economy .
It was psychological. Those pushing for EU integration had/have successfully manipulated such people into a state where not supporting EU membership would seriously undermine their sense of self - it would make them part of an uncivilised mongol horde. That's why you cannot deploy logic or facts in an argument with a remainer.
You seem to assume all Remainers wanted more EU integration . As for facts or logic not sure being on the Leave side is a badge of honour in that respect ! As one of those Remainers EU membership isn’t really about economics . That was really a stale argument flogged to cremation by a very poor Remain campaign in 2016.
And he appears to believe that those favouring EU membership are done sort of monolithic opinion block.
In any event, the economic case for membership is a pretty strong one.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these.
Do what he's always done; deploy superior financial resources (in this case, those of government) to drain the resources of his opponents.
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
This is a tax on the best of humanity plus doctors and accountants.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it! You're meant to come down here and defend me against these characters, and the only one I've got on my side is the blood-sucking lawyer!"
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Flooding apparently. Presumably because building something = acres of concrete, inside his head.
I could see solar panels increasing the flood risk. They will decrease the surface area onto which the rain falls and increase the run off rate. There is also quite a lot of infrastructure (switchgear etc) which is hard standing.
The land will no longer be ploughed, but it is quite firm clay and this may not actually help stop run off.
Both catchments (Kearsley Brook, Hooton Brook) caused some flooding in 2007, so without further modelling it might not be entirely clear what the effect will be.
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Flooding apparently. Presumably because building something = acres of concrete, inside his head.
I could see solar panels increasing the flood risk. They will decrease the surface area onto which the rain falls and increase the run off rate. There is also quite a lot of infrastructure (switchgear etc) which is hard standing.
The land will no longer be ploughed, but it is quite firm clay and this may not actually help stop run off.
Both catchments (Kearsley Brook, Hooton Brook) caused some flooding in 2007, so without further modelling it might not be entirely clear what the effect will be.
Just chuck some beavers at it.
Ha! Watch this space. I suggested exactly that for one part of the catchment [owned by the council] and it didn't get rejected out of hand...
I don't think flooding risk is a valid reason to stop this development but I don't think it can be dismissed as a fiction.
What the development does do is eat up green space for people who don't have much of it. It isn't a rural location in the middle of nowhere.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these.
Do what he's always done; deploy superior financial resources (in this case, those of government) to drain the resources of his opponents.
Anything beyond that would be a bonus.
But how bothered am I if I'm James Comey? I know I'm not going to jail, my lawyer is probably taking the work pro bono, because it's amazing publicity that keeps me in the public eye for future speaking tours and books.
This isn't like a civil suit where someone is demanding billions of dollars with big name attorneys, and I'm spending a fortune defending myself. Heck, the Public Defender can probably handle this one.
35% think Clarkson would make a good MP and a majority of Conservative and Reform voters think that so if they united behind Clarkson to beat Miliband he could face a tough fight
Lam's comments are vague. Is she talking about sending back people legally here on temporary visas, or who have indefinite leave to remain, or who have acquired citizenship?
She talks about "cultural coherence". She should be pressed on what or who she means. I presume it's a dog-whistle for Muslims.
I believe she is very clear in what she meant. I suspect you are right about the anti-Islam dog whistle.
Cheap and nasty politics.
It's going to take some time to get there but the only non fascist non racist approach to Islam, in the actual situation we are in, is incorporation into the mainstream. Millions are here, lawfully and properly and it makes no difference now as to whether it was a good idea at the time. The UK population as a whole, whatever they prefer the past to have been, are not going to watch long term and permanently settled populations, including friends and neighbours 'remigrated'.
No wonder there are no One Nation Tories left. They have all been forcibly remigrated to Labour, the LDs and NOTA. Reform and Tory words on this recently have been shameful.
Not quite true, there are even some Muslim Tory MPs still like Nus Ghani and Saqib Bhatti
Isn't the key tension between Clarkson the man and Clarkson the character? Becoming an MP is exactly the sort of thing that Jezza, the lead personality of the (scripted reality/fictional) Jezza Show might do, but the real human being? Not sure, but he probably has more sense. In any case, the gap between the character and the man might piss off his supporters. (See also, that unreality star "Boris").
If he made a show about running for office (and season two was him being an MP) I bet it would be a hit.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these.
Do what he's always done; deploy superior financial resources (in this case, those of government) to drain the resources of his opponents.
Anything beyond that would be a bonus.
But how bothered am I if I'm James Comey? I know I'm not going to jail, my lawyer is probably taking the work pro bono, because it's amazing publicity that keeps me in the public eye for future speaking tours and books.
This isn't like a civil suit where someone is demanding billions of dollars with big name attorneys, and I'm spending a fortune defending myself. Heck, the Public Defender can probably handle this one.
Comey will, probably, be OK.
But it's half a year at least out of his life, and he's painted as a target for every MAGA nutter (another couple of them arrested today for potential assassination plots) out there.
2 experienced prosecutors looked at the case against Letitia James and decided it was insufficient to bring charges. One of these was the relevant Attorney for the district. He soon resigned before being sacked. Trump then appointed one of his personal attorneys, Halligan, to the job, someone with zero prosecution experience. She, at Trump’s instruction, launched the case against James.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
I struggle to understand what Trump thinks he's going to achieve with these.
Do what he's always done; deploy superior financial resources (in this case, those of government) to drain the resources of his opponents.
Anything beyond that would be a bonus.
how are you allowed a second go with a different grand jury?
As with Martin Bell, Clarkson’s only chance is if every other major party (including Reform) withdraws and gives him a clean run.
However, if Clarkson can force Ed Miliband to spend a fair amount of the next three years in Darlington rather than in Westminster, then it probably helps the country in the long run.
Darlington? Darlington?
Ed is Doncaster North, not that I have seen him once in the constituency in all the years he has been the MP.
I don't think Clarkson will win unless everyone else stands down, which they won't.
I was surprised there was no Reform candidate in the GE. I think the block Labour vote from the ex-mining villages is slowly disappearing and is becoming Reform adjacent - this was apparent in the council elections.
[Clarkson lived in a big grade II listed house in Tickhill as a child. This is not exactly a deprived area, and is in a different constituency]
It is a bit odd that the Milibands have always been very smart London. Ralph 'Martyr to the cause' always kept himself in nice digs and his sons too. Quite what they offer to Doncaster or South Shields that was unavailable locally escapes me. Still it's nice that Ed has a regional accent... just not sure that there are any regions willing to adopt it.
(I really am starting to dislike EdM.)
Intellectual North London more than rich West and Central London though. Albeit both a long way from Doncaster and South Shields (as is NYC where David Miliband went off in a huff after South Shields failed to do its job of catapulting him to Labour leader and PM, Ed to be fair to him has stuck with Doncaster)
Miliband's got a local problem to deal with first:
Three MPs have criticised plans for a 3,500-acre solar farm between Doncaster and Rotherham.
The project, named Whitestone Solar Farm, would stretch across a number of separate parcels of land and could power 250,000 homes.
However, local MPs John Healey, Sarah Champion and Jake Richards have all raised concerns about the size and location of the scheme.
...
Healey, Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, told project developer Green Nation in a letter that the scheme did not meet his expectations, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"In my view, every project must still meet three tests: it must be proportionate, it must be safe, and it must be fair - Whitestone fails all three," he said.
He said it was "the wrong scale of scheme in the wrong place".
I'm struggling to think of ways in which the solar farm won't be safe... Solar (photovoltaic) panels are -one would think- by far the "safest" form of electricity generation. There's no swinging blades at high height; there's no radioactive byproducts; there's no high pressure, high temperature steam; there's no slag heap.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Burden of proof. First do no harm. It's not fair. The precautionary principle. It's not environmentally friendly. Have you done an impact assessment? An equality assessment? What about the bats? The worms? The fauna? The owls? I demand a judicial review of your decision. I find this offensive and a violation of my dignity. I'll launch a petition. I'll launch a crowd funder. A Patreon. I'll launch an appeal. Another appeal. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!!!
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
Finally something for Kemi to get her teeth into, if she can't make the Tories the party of the highest earners and rich again after Reeves hammers them with tax what can she do? If the Budget contains all the above measures she should certainly at minimum see the Conservatives regain Westminster from Labour and maybe Wandsworth too in the all out London local elections next year and increase the Tory majority in Kensington and Chelsea
Rachel Reeves will launch a £2 billion tax raid on lawyers, family doctors and accountants as she seeks to balance the books by targeting the wealthy
The chancellor is expected to use the budget to impose a new charge on people who use limited liability partnerships as she tries to fill a £30 billion hole in the public finances
More than 190,000 workers use partnerships, particularly in the legal world, and they offer a significant tax benefit over ordinary employment. They are not subject to employers' national insurance as partners are treated as self-employed
Reeves is said to consider this unfair and is expected to announce changes to the system in her budget. She has repeatedly said that 'those with the broadest shoulders' should pay their 'fair share of tax', and many of those who use partnerships are high earners
Details of the planned tax raid on partnerships were obtained by The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times
More than 13,000 partners earn an average of £1.25 million each a year. Solicitors who draw profits from partnerships make an average of £316,000 a year. The family doctors make £118,000 and accountants an average of £246,000
Reeves is also expected to push ahead with a mansion tax, imposing capital gains on the sale of main residences for the most expensive properties
As a self employed advocate I paid quite a chunk of NI. Not as much as I do now sort of employed by Crown Office, but not nothing either.
Increasing or widening the scope of employee NICs is altogether the wrong way round. Continue to cut it and stick up income tax instead. Capital gains on sales is also the wrong way to go about a property tax.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
Yes. It is ridiculous that a company director pays EeNI (and, indirectly, Ers NI as well) on his salary but doesn't on his dividends. It is ridiculous that someone who works for a living pays more tax than those receiving rent or interest or pensions. It is preposterous that the rate of tax is less on capital gains than it is on income earned or unearned. So often these numbers are interchangeable and it is the rest of us that pay for these games. Our tax system is a complicated joke which benefits the wealthy and the well paid at the cost of the rest of us.
There are also other issues with LLPs. The Eye ran a special about this some months - or a year or two - back.
Comer: "The evidence we've gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way. Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein. We're working to bring former President Clinton in for a deposition, but the Democrats aren't helping one bit." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1980642046206447744
Comer: "The evidence we've gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way. Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein. We're working to bring former President Clinton in for a deposition, but the Democrats aren't helping one bit." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1980642046206447744
Comments
I suppose not many from Bentley were going to vote for the party of Thatcher, so it was basically by default.
The Labour party has sown the seeds of its own destruction by taking constituencies for granted.
You have to be drinking deeply from the well of MAGA propaganda to believe any of this is appropriate.
Halligan went to a grand jury to get an indictment. James’s great-niece testified before that jury that she lives in the house and doesn’t pay rent. The jury appears to have refused to support an indictment. It appears Halligan then tried a new grand jury, this time without the niece testifying, and managed to secure an indictment.
It would be hilarious if Ed Miliband got back in because of a split "pub loudmouth"vote.
Just as Boris gets a pass even though he's very pro immigration.
Setting traps for one's successor is not really looking after the best interests of the nation. I am surprised at Hunt, and not a little disappointed.
That said if Reeves hadn't made her ludicrous (or as the kids say Ludacris) no new taxes pledge she would have more room for movement.
For that matter had Farage even visited Clacton, or Tice Skegness before the GE campaign. Or indeed since...
I'm sure builder X with his partner being allocated £12k for doing the accounts will be happy.
You can argue that Hunt should have increased taxes by more than he did given the level of deficit. I would probably agree. You can argue that he ducked difficult questions on spending. I would certainly agree. But it is dishonest to say that he cut taxes. He did not.
I contend: The penal Stamp Duty rates introduced by Osborne have stifled the UK economy.
I'm not going to make some great argument, you'll either see it or you won't, but I do think that property stamp duty has been a massive brake on our economy.
That puts ahead of - say - Jean Claude Juncker.
We have a debate on PB about exactly how large we think the state should be - Nordic or American. A far bigger issue is we always find the wrong thing or wrong way to tax, the wrong thing to spend on. It's driving me mad.
A sup rising number of people here think he is Trump or Farage. He is neither.
Trump/Farage would be Peron, and the Peronist who followed him. Authoritarian nationalists who tried to spend Argentina rich.
Millei came to power on the basis of (and has tried to) vaguely balance the books. Much in the style of the old IMF rescues of third and developing world nations.
He is the one trying to cleanup the party. If we get Full Faragism, we will get our Millei after a few decades of collapse.
This might be the most disturbing AI paper of 2025
Scientists just proved that large language models can literally rot their own brains the same way humans get brain rot from scrolling junk content online. They fed models months of viral Twitter data short, high-engagement posts and watched their cognition collapse: - Reasoning fell by 23% - Long-context memory dropped 30% - Personality tests showed spikes in narcissism & psychopathy And get this even after retraining on clean, high-quality data, the damage didn’t fully heal. The representational “rot” persisted. It’s not just bad data → bad output. It’s bad data → permanent cognitive drift. The AI equivalent of doomscrolling is real. And it’s already happening.
https://x.com/alex_prompter/status/1980224548550369376
The argument on here regarding NI being balanced by freezing thresholds may work on paper, but I don't buy it.
[Same applies to Farage]
And I'm sorry but given the partnership is limited liability I don't see where the risk involved is so I don't see why you should be subject to a lower rate of employer Ni than other directors.
However any transaction tax on property purchases outside of second homes is a stupid idea - taxes should be annual and on ownership....
Nothing funny about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
Union bosses splurged members’ cash on Vegas casinos and fine dining
Senior TSSA officials racked up £8,500 in expenses during a US trip 2022,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/21/union-bosses-spend-thousands-on-vegas-casinos/
Not going to happen because your boy Trump said "nyet".
Our latest Westminster voting intention (19-20 Oct) has the Greens on their highest figure ever recorded by YouGov
Reform UK: 26% (-1 from 12-13 Oct)
Labour: 20% (=)
Conservatives: 17% (=)
Lib Dems: 15% (-1)
Greens: 15% (+2)
SNP: 4% (+1)
https://x.com/yougov/status/1980596985192427849?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
The lowest score for the fascists with any pollster for at least 5 months. Should we be celebrating?
None of these are in his constituency, but they are ridiculously large and eating up a large proportion of the green space in an area where such space is in short supply. There have been lots of local protests.
There is, however, a (different) monster solar farm planned in Doncaster North. I've been vaguely involved in suggesting minor modifications to it to protect the environment (much of it is on pasture land, some adjacent to a wetland corridor) but the developers are having none of it and apparently a consultation with Ed got nowhere.
So he's definitely prepared to have them in his own constituency.
The people in the rural parts aren't the ones that vote for him, though.
Except that solar panels sit above the ground. Very often now, there are no footings. The frames are just weighted down with concrete blocks - they just sit on the grass.
Perhaps I should contact him about the aetheric and phlogiston risks of solar farming? {giggles evilly}
“Photonic Overharvesting and Its Consequences for Aether Stability and Phlogiston Retention in the Lower Atmosphere”
Abstract
Recent expansions in terrestrial heliocapture infrastructure—commonly referred to as “solar farms”—have raised unanticipated concerns regarding their perturbative effects on the sub-luminiferous aether and regional phlogiston equilibria. Using a combination of neo-alchemical spectroscopy and quantum-vital resonance mapping, we demonstrate that extensive photon sequestration leads to measurable rarefaction in local aether density (Δρₐ ≈ 0.42 milli-ether units per gigawatt of capture capacity). Concurrently, phlogistic depletion was observed in the immediate atmos-temporal boundary layers, suggesting partial oxidation of the vital fire principle through sustained heliometric interference. Computational modeling within the Aetheric Dynamic Framework (ADF-7) predicts long-term destabilization of neighboring epiphanic vortices, potentially resulting in spontaneous cold combustion events and the attenuation of spontaneous generation processes. Our findings highlight the urgent need for an integrated heliophlogistic regulatory framework and recommend immediate suspension of solar array expansion pending further metaphysical impact assessment.
Here’s half an hour of an opera singer dissecting “Rap God” by Eminem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFDnPLgc4Qs
This will be a very interesting result
Plaid or Reform and Labour annihilated ?
No wonder there are no One Nation Tories left. They have all been forcibly remigrated to Labour, the LDs and NOTA. Reform and Tory words on this recently have been shameful.
What is the safety aspect that Mr Healey is concerned about?
I mean, you can take issue regarding their cost or location or the opportunity cost of not using the location for (say) housing. But safety... I mean... what?
Isn't the key tension between Clarkson the man and Clarkson the character? Becoming an MP is exactly the sort of thing that Jezza, the lead personality of the (scripted reality/fictional) Jezza Show might do, but the real human being? Not sure, but he probably has more sense. In any case, the gap between the character and the man might piss off his supporters. (See also, that unreality star "Boris").
https://news.sky.com/story/incoming-oxford-union-president-george-abaraonye-loses-confidence-vote-sparked-by-charlie-kirk-comments-but-disputes-result-13453099
Hang on, I thought intimidating the returning officer was a MAGA thing
https://www.whtimes.co.uk/news/national/25558290.oxford-union-confidence-vote-suspended-intimidation-returning-officer/
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vows to stop the World Economic Forum.
"Their scheme, which they call the Great Reset, will drain whatever's left in your bank account."
"They have a plan, but my plan is to stop them."
https://x.com/redpilldispensr/status/1980250457395065148
Soon after his election, and on the anniversary of their invasion, he gave a speech. It was by far the best speech on the subject by an Argentinian leader: he hoped that by making Argentina rich and prosperous, the people of the Falkland Islands would choose to become Argentinian, and that sovereignty reseted in their hands.
A little economic difficulties arrive... and suddenly he's giving a fire and brimstone speech at the UN about their illegal occupation.
That's going down the populist rabbit hole, rather than looking after his people via economic reforms.
(See also, "we can't have solar panels because then we will all starve"; nonsense amplified by vested interests.)
There is no way that Comey isn't going to walk.
I woulde be extremely surprised if Latetia James doesn't get the big NG too.
And there are going to be a whole bunch of real criminals who don't end up being convicted because the US attorneys' offices are hollowed out because all the career prosecutors left rather than pursue doomed cases. How is that a vote winning strategy?
The land will no longer be ploughed, but it is quite firm clay and this may not actually help stop run off.
Both catchments (Kearsley Brook, Hooton Brook) caused some flooding in 2007, so without further modelling it might not be entirely clear what the effect will be.
That's outrageous.
In any event, the economic case for membership is a pretty strong one.
Arguing over the TV remote, Mum just told me "If you fancy Alice Roberts so much, why don't you go on a digging expedition with her?"
Anything beyond that would be a bonus.
After being informed a PARDONED January 6 rioter was arrested for a plot to kill Hakeem Jeffries, Mike Johnson shrugs it off:
“The violence on the left is far more prevalent than the violence on the right.”
What an absolute piece of shit.
https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1980648781663400371
I don't think flooding risk is a valid reason to stop this development but I don't think it can be dismissed as a fiction.
What the development does do is eat up green space for people who don't have much of it. It isn't a rural location in the middle of nowhere.
This isn't like a civil suit where someone is demanding billions of dollars with big name attorneys, and I'm spending a fortune defending myself. Heck, the Public Defender can probably handle this one.
And now? Potentially, this stops when Vance says "stop". He can't invoke the 25th by himself, but he has a heavyweight role in doing so.
If he wants.
Labour projected 136, the LDs 71 and the Tories 49 and the Greens still behind even the SNP on 12 MPs to 36 for the Nationalists despite their 15% voteshare
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=17&LAB=20&LIB=15&Reform=26&Green=15&UKIP=&TVCON=100&TVLAB=100&TVLIB=100&TVReform=100&TVGreen=100&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
But it's half a year at least out of his life, and he's painted as a target for every MAGA nutter (another couple of them arrested today for potential assassination plots) out there.
That's not nothing.
The corruption is relentless.
Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases
Senior department officials who were defense lawyers for the president and those in his orbit are now in jobs that typically must approve any such payout, underscoring potential ethical conflicts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/us/politics/trump-justice-department-compensation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vE8.rkYK.CcpxQWp_cjd5&smid=nytcore-android-share
Like, share and subscribe... ☹️
"Can we see it, then ?"
"No."
Comer: "The evidence we've gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way. Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein. We're working to bring former President Clinton in for a deposition, but the Democrats aren't helping one bit."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1980642046206447744
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/08/trump-epstein-birthday-letter